Few sports are as hotly contested as auto racing, which means that when things don’t go someone’s way, there is always a chance for fisticuffs to break out. Of course the roundy round racers have more of a history of “takin’ it outside” than most other series. The NASCAR circus kept true to that history yesterday when Jeff Gordon got into Clint Bowyer on the last lap of the 3 to last race of the season at Phoenix.

For those of you, who like me, didn’t get to see the race, I’ve got the action for you below.

What do you think: with the absence of the NHL, should the NASCAR boys keep fighting like hockey players?

Kasey Kahne will accept his second Coors Lite Pole award of the 2012 season today during Driver introductions at Martinsville.

Kasey Kahne wants to win, and starting from the pole for the Goody’s Fast Relief 500 is how he plans on getting it done. For the second time this year Kahne finds himself leading the field to the green, this time with a speed of 96.128 mph, and hopes for a better ending to the race this time than he has had yet. Moving into Hendrick equipment this year should’ve meant more consistency, better finishes, and better points position, but lady luck has had other plans for Kahne so far. Wrecking out early, engine issues, and just plain bad luck have kept Kahne down in 27th in points despite his excellent starts so far this season. Since moving to Hendrick’s Kahne has an average starting position of 7.6 but has only averaged 20.6 position on his finishes.

Martinsville is a different beast than other tracks on the circuit. A short track which has the nickname of the Paperclip due to the unique track layout. The .526 mile track is the shortest in NASCAR and has a reputation for giving drivers a rough ride, and for shortening tempers. So how does Kahne feel about Martinsville?

“It’s a tough track to qualify and a tough track to race — always has been one of my tougher ones over the years,” said Kahne, who has only led for a total of 19 laps at the famed short track in his career. “I’m glad we can start up front, have a great pit stall — that No. 1 stall — I think that helps throughout the whole race with track position.”

“Hopefully, we’ll have a solid day [on Sunday]. That’s what we need to do. We’ve had great Fridays and Saturdays but just haven’t put together a Sunday yet.”

Kevin Harvick will start second today in Martinsville

Kevin Harvick will start second on the grid after qualifying only .08 mph slower with a speed of 97.048 mph. Can “The Closer” get it done from here? Harvick won here last spring and would love to repeat that feat but there are 42 other drivers. Making his 400th career start since taking over the ride after the tragic loss of Dale Earnhardt Sr., Harvick feels that his team has matured and that things are finally coming together again in the RCR stables.

“I feel like it’s taken seven or eight years to get through the Earnhardt transition,” Harvick said. “There’s a lot of things you look back on now and that effect took a lot of time. Then as the grandkids — Austin and Ty — came, you [can] really see that enthusiasm level come back that I first saw in Richard in 1999 and 2000 as we led into the start of my career at RCR.”

4 time Martinsville winner Denny Hamlin will start third followed by Clint Bowyer who ran the exact same time, but will start fourth based on current owner points. Ryan Newman starts 5th.

Dale Earnhardt Jr edged current series Champion Tony Stewart by one spot on the starting grid and will start 14th and Stewart 15th.

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The Allstar race will take on a new format once again as NASCAR changes it up once again.

The format will have the drivers competing in 4 separate segments of 20 laps each and a final 10 lap shootout. The winner of each of the first 4 segments will be advanced to the front for the restart before the final 10 lap segment, rewarding the sinners of the 4 segments with track position right when they need it most.

Steve Addington, Crew Chief for the #14 of Tony Stewart, talks about how this will change the strategy for the event this time around.

“Those 20-lap segments are going to be a lot like the 10-lap segment,” said Steve Addington. “Everybody’s going to be wanting to get up front. I think it’s going to be really important to win one of those segments, because coming down pit road, that opens it up to a lot.”

Former All-Star Race winner Kasey Kahne said it would be tough for a driver on old tires to hold off another with four tires for the entirety of the final 10-lap segment. But the potential scenarios seem endless.

“If four guys don’t get anything, and then you restart sixth with tires, you might be able to win from there,” said Kahne, who won the event in 2008. “It will be interesting how it all works out. It will be a crew chief’s game late in the race.”

“I think the 20-lap segments are going to mean a lot,” Kahne said. “You want to be in that top four coming to pit road for the final 10, because 10 laps goes by quick here. You’ve got to be in those front four spots if you want to win the race in 10 laps, I think.”

Brad Kesolowski's #2 Miller Lite Dodge proved to be the fastest at Bristol as he takes his second career Checkered flag at this track

When Brad Kesolowski won the race in Bristol in August 2011 almost everyone you talked to about it said it was because of how he took advantage of the timing lines on pit road and that his car was not good enough for the win, myself included. So NASCAR made changes to the timing lines, and Kesolowski went out to prove that he could win even without that advantage, and he did by winning the 2012 Food City 500 after leading the final 111 laps and holding off Matt Kenseth right up to the end. with a margin of almost 6 full car lengths at the finish line, Kesolowski proved how fast his #2 Miller Lite, Penske Racing Dodge, really was.

“I got on Twitter, and I got kind of PO’d at some people that said I won it because of the timing line,” Keselowski said. “I knew this Blue Deuce was fast enough to win the race last fall with or without timing lines. It feels so good just to prove it here in the spring race.

“This car here, this brand-new car that Penske Racing built — everybody back at the shop did a phenomenal job. The last few races have been really good, and I knew we had a shot at winning one if we closed the deal.”

“Matt didn’t make it easy,” said Kesolowski. ”That’s his job, to not make it easy on me. He raced me hard; I raced him hard, rubbed a little bit. That’s good racing.”

Matt Kenseth finshed second in Bristol in his #17 Roush Racing Ford.

Kenseth in his #17 Best Buy Ford, who finished second, felt he may have had a chance on the final restart if Kesolowski has chosen the bottom line.

”If I’d have been on the top, maybe I could have pinned him down there,” Kenseth said. ”But on old tires, I knew he was going to choose the top.”

“Yeah, he screwed that up,” Kenseth said, joking about the lane choice. “He should have started on the bottom for me. Unfortunately, he didn’t. I don’t know. I couldn’t run on the bottom, and Brad was really strong on the bottom of 1 and 2.

“I was thinking I could run outside of him, but he would roll through there so fast you could never get a run on him. I think he liked the bottom of 1 and 2, but I could never get around on the bottom of 1 and 2, so that was the right thing to do, to start on the top and leave me on the bottom — for him.”

Martin Truex finished 3rd and led his team to a 3-4-5 finish in the Food City 500 at Bristol Motorspeedway.

Michael Waltrip Racing had a banner day with all three of their cars finishing top 5. The 56 of Martin Truex Jr finished third followed by teammates Clint Bowyer in the #15 5 Hour Energy machine, and Brian Vickers making his return to racing in 5th in the #55 Aaron’s Dream Machine which he shares with Mark Martin this year.

“It was a great day for us. The only way it could have been better would have been to have the cars run one-two-three,” said Scott Miller, executive vice president of competition at MWR. “It was just a super-good day for us.”

“It’s been a long time coming,” Truex said. “I told a lot of people in the off season that we’ve done a lot of things to make our team better. We had a great end to the year last year and we’ve really just been carrying that momentum. I’ve got a lot of confidence in my team right now — and obviously we’ve got good race cars. That makes our job a lot easier.”

Clint Bowyer put a lot of emphasis on the team success over his personal finish. Having moved to the #15 car this year when RCR could not find the funding to run a 4th car full time in 2012, Bowyer moved from Chevy to Toyota with MWR and has not seemed to lose any momentum in the changes.

“The 56 bunch had a really good package for this race last year. We elected to go with that and it paid off pretty good,” Bowyer said.

An excellent return to the race track for Brian Vickers as he earned a 5th place finish in his first race in the 2012 season

Brian Vickers, however, was the talk of the garage. After losing his ride last yet to a combination of time off recovering from an illness, and a team pulling out of the sport, Vickers was left without a ride at the end of the 2011 season. In his first on track showing this year however he took a 25th place qualifying effort and turned it into a top 5 result. Vickers even led the second most laps of the race with 125, second only to the eventual winner Brad Kesolowski’s 232 laps led.

“It felt really good when we were out there leading,” Vickers said. “It would have been awesome to hold onto that, but it was my first time back so I can’t complain.

“What an organization. I’m so proud to be a part of getting all three cars in the top five. I can’t thank [team owners]Michael Waltrip and Rob Kauffmann and everyone at MWR enough. I don’t know those two guys that well, but I can tell a lot about them by the group of people they’ve assembled and the team they’ve built. What an incredible organization.”

Other notable names had mixed results in their finishes. Tony Stewart was unable to find the handle on his car this week and ended up 14th. Dale Earnhardt Jr was in the top 5 all day long, but on the final pit stop of the day Jr was caught speeding on pit road entry and was sent to the back of the lead lap as punishment. Unable to make up spots in traffic Jr finished as the last car on the lead lap in 15th place and dropped 2 positions in the points to 6th. Jeff Gordon and Dale Jr had an on track incident which was blown out of proportion by most of the fans and media. What was actually a minor rub on the track ended with Gordon cutting a tire on Earnhardt Jr’s tailpipe relegating the #24 car to a lackluster 35th place finish. While the media made a big deal out of Gordon’s initial comments, Gordon himself noted afterwards that it wasn’t intentional, wasn’t even a hard knock, and was simply a racing incident, the kind of thing one expects to happen at Bristol.

Clint Bowyer showed us that no matter what, teammate or not, when it comes down to it, you’ve got to race for the win.Ã‚Â Pushing his teammate Jeff Burton on the last restart after the ninth caution, the Bowyer/ Burton tandem got a massive jump on the field running almost 20 car lengths away from the pack, which allowed for them to split apart and have a drag race to the finish.Ã‚Â Burton opened up the bottom line coming out of turn 4 and Bowyer made an early move, almost too early, and held off Burton through the tri-oval and right to the checkered flag.Ã‚Â Ã‚Â Ã‚Â The lat 200 yds was the best acing on the track all day.Ã‚Â The slingshot manouver brought Bowyer door to door with Burton, who tried everything he could to sniff a little more draft off Bowyer’s car, but it was Bowyer who prevailed and took the checkered flag.Ã‚Â Bowyer was prepared to push his teammate to the the win but when the lead opened up and the pack fell behind, he did what it took to get himself back into the win column.

“He[Burton]Ã‚Â kind of moved up off of [Turn] 4, and I knew it was too early to go, but it was going to be a drag race, and it would give us both a shot at it,” Bowyer said. “He worked so well with me all day long. You hate that it comes down to that, but it is what it is, and you owe it to your team and your sponsors to go out and win the race.”

“Unfortunately, it came down to that situation, but — trust me — I was prepared to push him to the win, no matter what the cost was, if we’d have had people breathing down our necks. It just wasn’t meant to be for him. He’s been a great teammate, and I’ve learned a lot from him — but he’s already won a lot of races [21], and I’ve only won five.”

Burton took his second place finish with a smile of pride.Ã‚Â After all, it’s not every day that you get to break the two car tandem at Talladega and drag race your teammate to the finish line.

Jeff Burton - Image courtesy of JDTImages

“Whenever you leave here not wrecked, you ought to be happy, but at the same time, I’m heartbroke we didn’t win the race,” said Burton, who recorded his first top-five finish in more than a year. “Having said all of that, I don’t know what I would have done different.”

“Honestly, I thought he made his move too early. I kind of gave him the bottom, because you tend to be able to pull them back to you better when you’re on their right rear quarter panel. He made his move really early, I thought. I thought I’d be able to pull back to him, but he had a lot of momentum when he made the move.”

The race also made a huge difference in the points standings as some tried to hang out in the back field for safety and never had the chance to move forward at the end of the race.

Carl Edwards hung at the back with Greg Biffle all day and made his move towards the front with around 40 to go, but with the burst of cautions coming right at the end of the race, Edwards was not able to get all the way to the front having to settle for an 11th place finish.Ã‚Â 11th was still good enough to gain points on Kenseth, who sits 2nd in the standings by14 points now, but 3rd and 4th in the standings made gains on Edwards by finishing ahead of him.

Brad Kesolowski

Brad Kesolowski finished 4th on the track and moved up to 3rd in the standings, now only 18 points behind the leader, Carl Edwards.Ã‚Â Gaining 3 positions in the standings from 7th to 3rd Kesolowski is showing that the consistency that got him into the chase is still working in his favor and moving him to the front of the standings slowly but surely.

“This is exactly how we needed to leave Talladega, with a strong finish — gained points on the leader; gained points, really, on all the Chase cars. ”

“I’m very proud of the effort, proud to have a good day and very fortunate to have missed all the wrecks.”

Tony Stewart, who led the most laps of the day gaining 2 bonus points along the way, held out for a 7th place finish on the track and moved up another spot in the standings from 5th to 4th.

The other teams who chose to hang back did not fare as well as Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle.Ã‚Â Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr hung back all day as well and when the time came to move forward they simply could nit find any room to move around the field who was running 3 and 4 wide in front of them as the final laps of the race wore down.Ã‚Â Avoiding the wrecks to make it to the finish is always the plan at Talladega, but it also leaves you in a precarious position not knowing if you can make it back to the front when it counts.Ã‚Â Jr and Jimmie talk about how their planned failed.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. - Image courtesy of JDTImages

“Whenever we thought they were getting a little bit crazy, we’d move into the safe areas and we rode there most of the day with a lot of other people doing the same thing,” Earnhardt said. “Then at the end, we had a lot of cautions late. We wanted to try to work our way toward the front in the last 20 laps. The cautions kept coming out, and we ran over some debris and we had to come to pit road. We just didn’t have the track position at the end to make a run with two laps to go.Ã‚Â Just not enough time.”

Still, Earnhardt still believes that their plan was solid, just that lady luck was not on their side on Sunday.

“Yeah. There’s a lot more room at this place,” he said. “Daytona is real narrow when it comes down to it. We felt like we were in a good position to make our move inside those 20 laps to go, and we just kept having cautions and that sort of hurt our strategy a little bit and didn’t give us a chance there with two to go. I mean, [you] run up on guys five-wide, you can’t go nowhere.”

Johnson agreed.Ã‚Â After being pushed across the line for the win by Jr earlier this year, Johnson stated publicly that if the tables were turned the next time around he would be glad to be pushing Jr at the checkered flag, but the opportunity never presented itself as they got mired in the field finishing 25th (Earnhardt) and 26th (Johnson).

Jimmie Johnson - Imgage courtesy of JDTImages

“We planned our strategy like we had hoped to,” Johnson said. “And on that last restart at the end, we had some issues with my car overheating. That last caution that came out, I got some trash and grass and stuff on the grille of the car. We were out of sequence the way we were lined up. I was going to push Junior, and I had to be in the lead the way we had the debris on the grille. And then as we went to make our switch, the pack was organized and with the [final-laps] situation, there’s not a lot of time to get organized, and we lost our momentum there, and got to the outside and kind of stalled out up on the top, and finished far worse than we had hoped to.”

Does he fell that the championship is beyond his grasp now?

“We’ve just got to keep fighting, and keep working on getting every point we can at every race,” Johnson said. “We have no clue what’s going to happen to all the Chase drivers, and I want to finish as high as I possibly can in the Chase. That does mean the championship. If it’s not there, I want to finish as high as I possibly can.”

“We’re going to keep fighting hard,” Johnson said. “… and see what we can do.”

Tony Stewart catching a mouthful of the celebration spray from his crew after winning the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway - Image courtesy of JDTImages

It’s not how many laps you lead in the race, but which laps you lead that determines the winner.Ã‚Â Tony Stewart led only 2 laps to win the Sylvania 300 in on Sunday and proved that the only important lap to lead is the last one.Ã‚Â This was the fewest laps Stewart has ever led while winning a race, his previous low score was 6.Ã‚Â Running the last 71 laps on a single tank of fuel also showed that Stewart is becoming the master of fuel mileage in the current Sprint Cup cars.Ã‚Â With a fuel mileage win in Chicago just 6 days prior to this win, Stewart is making it look easy making his car go fast, and saving on fuel at the same time.

The reversal of fortune over last years Chase race in New Hampshire where Stewart ran out of gas and Clint Bowyer passed for the win was not lost on Tony and crew chief Darian Grubb.

“If that’s not a flip-flop from last year, I don’t know what is,” Stewart radioed to crew chief Darian Grubb after crossing the finish line.

“Man, what a way to win it.Ã‚Â Such an irony from last year where we ran out gas coming to the white.Ã‚Â You hate to see anybody lose that way, but you’ll take a win any way you can get it right now.”

“I saw (Bowyer) slow down the back stretch and thought ‘Oh no, You’re kidding me’Ã‚Â I know exactly how he feels right now.”

“I planned it for some 280 laps” Stewart joked.Ã‚Â “I knew he was going to run out of fuel right at that moment.”

“Clint was one of the first guys on pit road to get to me and congratulate me.Ã‚Â He’s thinking the same thing – just how ironic it was that the roles were reversed.”

Brad Kesolowski’s momentum and wild card entry into the chase are not showing any signs of slowing down.Ã‚Â 10 weeks ago when NASCAR left this track Kesolowski was 23rd in points and not looking like he had any shot of getting into the chase, a point that is not lost on the 27 year old driver of the #2 Miller Lite Dodge.

“It’s funny, because 10 races ago, we left Loudon here 23rd in points,” Keselowski said. “Who’d have ever thought we’d be third in 10 weeks? It’s been a good road to travel down the last few weeks, and today was no exception.”

“We weren’t the fastest car — I’d be lying if I tried to tell you we were — but we made good adjustments to our car, got it to where it was a good, solid top-10 car and drove up to fourth or fifth there with 100 to go, 80 to go, whatever that was. … All in all, I felt like we earned the majority of our good fortune.”

The third place finisher, Greg Biffle, made a hard fought effort to get there.Ã‚Â After tangling with 5 time champion Jimmie Johnson earlier in the race, Biffle continued his hard charge right to the end of the race.Ã‚Â Not having a chance to win the championship has put a different kind of motivation in the forefront of Biffle’s mind.

Ã¢â‚¬Å“My role being a non-Chase guy is to try to win the last eight (races) that are left,Ã¢â‚¬Â Biffle said.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. had some of the bad luck he experienced mid season return to him in Loudon.Ã‚Â Although NHMS is not a track where he has done particularly well in the past, Earnhardt was frustrated that he and his team did not get the position he felt they all deserved.

“I had an awesome car all day,” Earnhardt said. “Just pretty frustrating. I want to win here. We’ve been so good here in a lot of races and would like to win. But you’ve got to get up front, and we really couldn’t accomplish that all day long. We had a good, quick car and I am proud of how we worked on it. Happy about what my guys did. The car they brought and how they worked on the car, everything was seemingly going as planned until we got caught a lap down with Landon’s flat tire then we had a couple flats ourselves that cost us a couple more spots there. It’s frustrating, but I was happy with how the car was driving. As a driver, we haven’t had that all year.”

“We’ll take it right now. It could be worse,” Earnhardt said. “We could be sitting in Victory Lane, but we could be out of the Chase all together. I think having two flat tires, we got pretty lucky today to get home in the top 20.”

Jr was not the only chaser who’s luck ran out in Loudon.Ã‚Â Ryan Newman, who started the race from the pole, also had late race tire issues that scuttled his shot at a decent finish.Ã‚Â After winning the race here in July and setting the pace for the field on the green flag drop, Newman was looking at a top 10 finish when he had a tire go down in the ;ate stages of the race.

“We just had a tough day,” Newman said. “We had a couple of slow pit stops, and then we had a tire go down at the end. It was just a disappointing day for us. We just didn’t capitalize on what we could have, and today was a good day to do that, and we didn’t do it. Our team, we know we can do it. We’ve done it before. Going to Dover, we need to improve from where we were in the spring, and I think we can do that.”

Denny Hamlin, who was 12th in points entering the race, looked like he was going out for redemption from his 31st place finish in Chicago.Ã‚Â He was running in 6th when he was forced to pit for fuel with only 3 laps to go.Ã‚Â The stop ended up costing him 23 positions on the track giving his a 29th place finish, the lowest position finish of all the chasers for the second week in a row.

Denny Hamlin comes down the stairs during driver intros at NHMS - Image courtesy of JDTImages

Ã¢â‚¬Å“We thought we were good, and thatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s just strategy racing nowadays,Ã¢â‚¬Â Hamlin said. Ã¢â‚¬Å“We just came up short right there. The only thing I can think of is we were on a little bit of a cleaner racetrack that last run, but that was the worst fuel mileage we got all day, and I was backing my corner up quite a bit.”

Ã¢â‚¬Å“Either we werenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t getting the fuel mileage we thought or we didnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t get it full or I just used too much. WeÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve got to work through it. Another tough day for us, but weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re just figuring out what we need to do to be a little bit more competitive.Ã¢â‚¬Â

Broken ankle and all Brad Kesolowski is on a tear.Ã‚Â Winning his third race of the season, and the second since he broke his ankle, Kesolowski raced his way to the winners circle in Bristol last Saturday night.Ã‚Â He used every trick in his arsenal to get there too.Ã‚Â By taking advantage of the timing loops on pit road Brad was able to pass several cars every pit stop by drag racing from his pit up to 60 mph and then slowing before the timing loop back to the pit road speed of 35 mph therefore not incurring any speeding penalties on pit road.

A quick look at the standings from only 4 weeks ago showed Kesolowski in 21st with a single win and definitely not looking good to make the chase.Ã‚Â Yet here we are with only 2 races to go before the Chase and Brad Kesolowski has gainedÃ‚Â 10 positions up to 11th and 2 wins to bring his season total to 3, all of which put him in contention for a wild card, and if he keeps this level of performance up, and good chance to drive his way into the chase and knock Tony Stewart out of the running.

”An awesome car, an awesome team!” he yelled. ”Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt won this race. It’s a race of champions. There are races that pay more, that are races that might have a little more prestige, but this is the coolest damn one of them all.”

Asked what the secret of his turnaround is, he had this to say:

”A team that just starts to click and believes in each other,” Keselowski said. ”We’ve just made good adjustments to our cars over the last few months. We made good adjustments to our car today and we find ourselves in Victory Lane. I can’t believe it, I really can’t.”

Martin Truex Jr - Image coutesy og JDTImages

Martin Truex Jr. battled his way up to a second place finish showing that he still has the desire to go out there and get the win, right up to the end.

“It was back in ’07 — the last time I run second or won, you know?” Truex said. “It’s a helluva good feeling when you can see the leader at the end of one of these things. You know you’re in the ballpark and you got something for ’em.

“It feels good to be finishing up front — it’s been a while. We’ve had some good races here lately — fourth at [Watkins] Glen — so trying to build a little bit of momentum here towards the end of the year.

“The guys on the NAPA Toyota have been working really, really hard — all the buys at the shop, working hard on our stuff and just got to thank them for sticking with it and working hard.”

Jeff Gordon however led the most laps of the night (206) and was seemingly the dominant car on the track, but things just did not go his way at the end resulting in a third place finish at Bristol.Ã‚Â Crew Chief Alan Gustafson feels like they have been robbed of a win a few times this season now.

Jeff Gordon - Image courtesy of JDTImages

“Robbed at Indy, and robbed here. Yeah, I’m tired of it,” Gustafson said after Gordon led 206 laps but finished third in an event won by Brad Keselowski. “They did what they had to do to win. Our pit box, guys held us up, and guys would gas it up and pass us. It’s frustrating. But we’ve got the performance, and this team can perform at a high level, and the breaks are going to go their way for only so long. And the day it doesn’t, well be OK.”

Gordon himself felt taht the drag racing style of pit road action was the biggest cause of lost position in the pits.

“To me, the whole purpose of having timing lines and pit road speed is to make it as equal and fair for everybody as you possibly can. And they’ve got some work to do at this pit road. The race track is awesome, but the pit road is terrible. When a guy can run 60 miles an hour down pit road and the pit road speed is, what, 35, then something is wrong with the system,” Gordon said.

“We were able to do something similar to that on the back straightaway, so I don’t really feel like that’s what cost us [Saturday night]. I did have a couple cars coming down pit road that were going slow when I left my pit stall that held me up a little bit, but we qualified good, so we had one of those stalls. But even when you have one and you see the other guys have one, it’s a joke that somebody can leave pit road and run that fast down pit road and then slam on the brakes. [Matt] Kenseth drove by four cars, and so did [Keselowski] when he left his pit stall. I just don’t understand it. But that is the way that it is here, and it puts a huge premium on the pit stall and qualifying up front.”

“It’s been a while, man — it’s been a while,” Gordon said. “But I just love having a race car like we had [Saturday] night. We had so much fun, but we just needed not to be in fifth on that last restart. We needed to either be in the outside lane or a little bit further forward, and we had something for anybody.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr, and Tony Stewart are still the last men standing in chase contention without a win this season.Ã‚Â Sitting 9th and 10th in points respectively they are still on the bubble for chase contention.Ã‚Â Stewart was rather vocal about his chances of making the chase after last weeks race in Michigan saying that his team was just taking up space for a team that could actually make a run at the championship, while his equipment just isn’t good enough right now to get him there.Ã‚Â Earnhardt Jr, however managed to stay up in the field, finishing 16th and thanks to Stewart (28th) and Bowyer’s (26th) poor results at Bristol has padded his lead on them and has a firm grip on 9th place in the standings.

Danica Patrick during a new conference at the Toronto Honda Indy 2010 - Image courtesy of JDTImages

Danica Patrick made it official this weekend that she will be moving to NASCAR full time in for the 2012 season.Ã‚Â Running a full schedule for Jr. Motorsports, owned by Dale Earnhardt Jr. as well as a limited schedule in the Sprint Cup side for Stewart-Haas racing, owned by Tony Stewart.Ã‚Â Her performance this year shows a drastic improvement over her limited run in 2010, now that she seems to have shaken off the fact that these cars can touch, and often do, unlike the open wheelers she has driven for most of her career.

“If it was about money, I’d have gone a long time ago,” Patrick said from GoDaddy’s offices in north Scottsdale. “I just go where my heart tells me, where my gut tells me to go, where I’m enjoying my life the most, where I feel like I can have the most success. I’ve truly enjoyed my experience in NASCAR, to the point that I want to do it full-time.”

Brian France also seems pleased that Danica is making the move to NASCAR.

“We are pleased Danica Patrick has chosen to race full time in NASCAR in 2012,” NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France said in a statement. “She has demonstrated a strong desire to compete and NASCAR provides the best opportunity to race against the top drivers in the world with the largest and most loyal fan base in motorsports on a week-to-week basis. Danica has shown solid improvement in NASCAR and we believe her decision to run full time in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, with additional races in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, will be exciting for our fans and a great challenge for her.”

What does her leaving Indy Cars mean to the declining ratings for that series?Ã‚Â Only time will tell.Ã‚Â But for now she sill belong to NASCAR, and her marketing machine will do wonders in the world of circle racing.

It was the first of many races to come at Kentucky Speedway.Ã‚Â After a long court battle with the NASCAR sanctioning body, there was finally a race at Kentucky.Ã‚Â Drivers of course have been here many time to tire test as well as the Truck series and the Nationwide races held here before but this was the inaugural Sprint Cup race for this venue and it did not disappoint the sell out crowd with the on track action.Ã‚Â Kyle Busch set the standard now for this race track being the first driver to win a cup race here, and the first driver to win from the pole this season.Ã‚Â With qualifying rained out on Friday the field was set by the new rules, and the fastest practice times.

“I feel fortunate and blessed that weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re here in victory lane right now and in front of the great state of Kentucky Ã¢â‚¬â€œ all the fans that came out here today,” Busch said. “To win the inaugural one is pretty awesome.”

”This is cool man,” Busch said.Ã‚Â It was certainly a fun night for us,” he said. “CouldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t be happier to be in victory lane. This one ranks right up there with the best of them.Ã‚Â It’s certainly good to know we’re figuring things out.Ã‚Â I’m hoping (No. 100) comes at Loudon (next week)”

David Reutimann - Image courtesy of JDTImages.ca

As the race wound down it was Busch and Johnson lining up for the final restart but David Reutimann made a charge from the second row passing Jimmie Johnson and challenging for the win but was still Busch by 0.179 seconds at the finish line.

“It feels great, it feels good,” said Reutimann, who drives the No. 00 Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing. “Second is still second, but itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s certainly a lot closer than we have been in the last month or so. So it felt really good.”

Johnson, who looked really good for the win on the final restart, made a move to get ahead of Busch and it looked like he was going to get there until Busch came on strong in turn 3 and took the lead for the final, and most important time, of the night.

Jimmie Johnson - Image courtesy of JDTImages.ca

“If I could have stayed inside of him, (it) would have been one heck of a finish to the end,” Johnson said. “He cleared me and went on. Then I had my hands full with the 00 (Reutimann). I think he probably was the best car at the end. If he would have cleared me sooner, I think he would have been up there with (Busch) racing for the win.”

For most of the race it had been looking as if it was going to be the 18 and the #2 Miller Lite Doge entry of Brad Kesolowski fighting at the finish line but a series of restarts at the end kept moving Brad backwards through the line as he ended up on the inside line.

“At the end, the restarts are just a crapshoot,” Keselowski said. “If you get the bottom lane, you’re going backwards. I kept getting in an odd position and just kept getting on the bottom lane. Every restart just kept playing against us. It was a great effort by this race team and that makes me proud. We led laps and were competitive all night.

“So I’m proud of the effort of this race team, but disappointed in the results. It’s just a product of double-file restarts. That’s why drivers hate them — because some tracks are great and they [help us] put on a good show, and then there are tracks like this where it just completely screws your day.”

“It was an incredible Miller Lite Dodge [Saturday night],” Keselowski said. “I led a bunch of laps and I have to thank my team for that. Everyone at Penske Racing has a lot to be proud of. But I would have liked to have gotten a better finish from where we ended up.”

“It was a combination of the bumps on the race track and the being on the bottom [on the restarts],” he said. “When you restart on the bottom lane, not only don’t you not have air on the nose, you don’t have air on the right side of the car. The right-side [air] is what keeps these cars from spinning out. When you don’t have that air, you’re awful.”

This win also puts Kyle Busch up 2 spots and into the points lead with 4 points of Carl Edwards and 10 points over last weeks points leader Kevin Harvick who finished 16th for the night and dropped 2 spots to third in the standings.Ã‚Â Dale Earnhardt Jr. dropped another spot to 8th after a catastrophic tire failure, blowing out his left front tire with only 14 laps to go, moving him back deep into the field to 30th as the last car on the lead lap.Ã‚Â Tony Stewart moved up one spot in the standings to 11th just outside the chase spots, and with no wins so far this season Stewart runs a chance of missing the chase with only 8 races left in the regular season before the Chase.

Experience faced offÃ‚Â vs. youth and experience won out.Ã‚Â Mark Martin, the 4th oldest driver in the field working on his 53rd start at Daytona certainly has experience.Ã‚Â Not like Martin hasn’t been here before, it is his third career pole at Daytona.Ã‚Â He has 50 career poles and puts him in eights most poles of all time in Cup Racing history.Ã‚Â Trevor Bayne, the 2011 Daytona 500 winner, held the position for most of qualifying with an average speed run of 182.002 mph.Ã‚Â Ã‚Â But as qualifying drew to a close the 40th driver out to test for speed was Mark Martin, who bettered Bayne’s lap with an average speed of 182.065 mph making him the oldest driver to ever score a pole at the track.Ã‚Â Martin is 52 and 0 for wins at Daytona, so as he starts his 53rd race at this track does he feels that he is due or that the track owes him one?

”You know what? I’m pretty darn lucky to have gotten to race at Daytona, period, much less 53 times,” Martin said. ”I’ve survived some really hard crashes here and I’ve had some good times here. I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.

”The place doesn’t owe me a thing. Matter of fact, I owe the place and the sport a great deal for just letting me be a part of it.”

”I’ve had the pleasure of driving a lot of fast race cars and working with a lot of great teams and people through the years and I’m really grateful for that,” Martin said. ”This is really special because I know how much work goes into the four restrictor plate races each year by Hendrick Motorsports. It’s really pretty cool to be a part of that team.”

”I really didn’t expect to get the pole. When I ran, it could have been first or 21st.”

Trevor Bayne - Image courtesy of JDTImages.ca

Bayne however is at the opposite end of his career.Ã‚Â He is the only driver entering this race that is undefeated at this level and at this track.Ã‚Â He won the Daytona 500 in spectacular fashion, and on his career first start here, at the cup level.Ã‚Â He is young, fresh faced and eager, but knows he still has a lot to learn from the talent he is surrounded by.Ã‚Â But his season was paused when he was hospitalized for a week in May and treated for what doctors at the Mayo Clinic called an inflammatory condition but Bayne believes was Lyme disease. He originally thought he had been bitten on his arm by a spider a few weeks before symptoms that included double vision landed him in the hospital.Ã‚Â This had the unfortunate effect of eliminating his chances at a points victory in the Nationwide series with the amount of races he missed, however another win would certainly go a long way in soothing that pain.

Still, even having won here already at the Daytona 500, a feat that only 34 other drivers in NASCAR history have done before him, entering the track must have felt surreal.

”Coming into the tunnel, it didn’t sink in that I was coming back to Daytona,” he said. ”The next day, when I got on the track in the Nationwide car, as soon as I pulled onto the track, I realized that my last lap here was a victory lap. So as soon as you’re making that first lap you’re kind of going through the motions again and kind of feeling how you felt the last time.

”That was the biggest eye-opener and kind of cold-chill moment for me.Ã‚Â We didn’t do any drafting runs in practice,” Bayne said. “We did two mock [qualifying] runs, because we had to make it on time, and people pulled out in front of us on those runs, so we really didn’t get any practice at all.”

David Ragan on the track in Texas - Image courtesy of JDTImages.ca

The rest of the top 5 are drivers who have also had recent success here and always seem to run well.Ã‚Â Clint Bowyer always seems to do well here, even if he finishes upside down and on fire as he did in the 2007 Daytona 500, and still managed a 9th place finish.Ã‚Â Jeff Gordon has won here before and definitely knows his way around this race track.Ã‚Â David Ragan’s last time here was mired with disappointment when he lost his shot to win the 500 after NASCAR penalized him for passing too early on a late restart, qualified fifth in a Ford for Roush Fenway Racing.

The rest of the top 10 are also no strangers to running out front here.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. - Image courtesy of JDTImages.ca

Dale Earnhardt Jr., who is marking the 10-year anniversary of his emotional 2001 win here, qualified sixth for Hendrick Motorsports.

Andy Lally, a sports car veteran who led TRG Motorsports to a two-lap victory in the Grand Touring class here in January in the prestigious Rolex 24, qualified a career-best seventh.

”Daytona is hands-down my most special place as far as a race track goes,” Lally said. ”Having come here with the desire as a young kid to not only race in the Daytona 500, but then as my sports car career advanced, racing and winning the 24 Hours of Daytona, this has become the mecca for me.”

Starting in eighth is old 5 Time himself, Jimmie Johnson who won here in 2006 at the Daytona 500, which puts him in a great position to help out his teammate Dale Jr., who pushed him across the line for his only win this season at Talladega.

AJ Allmendinger was ninth in a Richard Petty Motorsports Ford, and Paul Menard rounded out the top 10 for RCR.

Joey Logano does not see himself as a road course racer.Ã‚Â Ã‚Â So imagine his surprise when he set the pace at 93.256 mph with a lap time of 76.821 Seconds and none of the drivers who followed him were able to better his speed for the Toyota/Save Mart 350.Ã‚Â This run makes Joey the youngest driver in Cup History to score a pole on a road course.Ã‚Â In his typical understated fashion Joey told the media just how surprised he really was.

Image Courtesy of JDTImages.ca

”I was very surprised,” he said. ”We were sitting in the trailer watching the last three guys to go and it was Kasey (Khane), who got the pole here last year, Denny (Hamlin), who is really good here and our teammate, and then Kurt (Busch), who has got the last three poles in a row. We didn’t think we were going to be good enough to get the pole, but made some good adjustments and got some speed in the car.

”This is the last place I expected to get a pole. I never considered myself a road course racer.”

“After practice, I felt like we needed a lot more forward drive, a lot more side bite in the car, and they (his crew) made it happen.”

“I was surprised. I felt like my lap was OK. I didn’t feel like it was stellar — by no means. And it held up.”

“I didn’t really think it was going to hold up, and I don’t think any of my guys thought it was going to hold up, but we’re really pumped up right now. We needed a good momentum change for our Home Depot team right now. We’ve been going through a little bit of a drought, and this is definitely going to help us a lot.”

Now he’s have to get his armor ready for the brawl that is about to follow.Ã‚Â Sonoma in recent years has become a track the requires skill and patience, and yet has more beating and banging that the shorts tracks that NASCAR fans are used to watching.Ã‚Â Just look at the results from the race here last year.Ã‚Â 11 laps in, four cars stacked up. Just past halfway, the event had to be stopped for 20 minutes to clean up a five-car accident. In nearly every passing zone, drivers in the middle of the pack beat and banged on one another as if they were on a short track. Many were inadvertently caught in the crossfire and spun out.Ã‚Â Although the race is most remembered for Marcos Ambrose losing the lead when his car failed to restart on an uphill grade while he tried to conserve fuel, the conversations and appologies after the race were all about or from Jeff Gordon. Clint Bowyer,Martin Truex Jr.,Kurt Busch, and Elliot Sadler were among those demanding answers from Gordon afterward.

”

Image Courtesy of JDTImages.ca

There’s preferred lines, and there’s basically being off line,” Gordon said. “If you happen to get put in a position where you’re off line, then you’re going to scratch, claw, with everything you possibly can, especially in the closing laps. There’s no doubt that in the closing laps … it’s as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than a short track.”

“It was an off day for Jeff,”Ã‚Â said Kurt Busch on Friday. “He apologized to a handful of guys afterward, and for some reason … excluded apologizing to me. I thought that was interesting. He drove straight through our right rear, gave us a flat, and we finished 32nd. You have your bad days. You have your moments of beating and banging. It’s one of those things where the lines keep getting further and further towards the aggressive side here at Sonoma.”

Kevin Harvick offered some idea of why the aggression factor is so high on a road course like Sonoma.

“I think there are very limited places to pass, and so when you see somebody that’s vulnerable, you have to take advantage of it. And when you get taken advantage of, you obviously want to minimize it as much as you can,”said Harvick. “As long as the fenders aren’t rubbing the tires here, you can usually still make good lap times. Road courses have become very physical races, and the cars look more like they should have been at Martinsville than probably anywhere else. It’s a fun race, and it has become very physical over the last three or four years. I think that’s more of a tribute to this particular car, because you can be more aggressive with it and not get yourself in trouble with fenders dragging tires and things.”

Jimmie Johnson agrees.

“When you’re in the center of the pack, it’s just an energy that exists when somebody makes a questionable move on you, and your excitement level goes up. And now you make a move on a guy, and it just kind of breeds this style of racing, and we’re going to see it,” he said. “Anymore, the passing zones, drivers are so aggressive in defending the passing zones and braking zones that you have to find a different way by, or just bomb it in there and the eight-tires-are-better-than four mentality and hope that you make it. I think there’s a very good chance of a lot of action taking place.”

Photo Courtesy of JDTImages.ca

Even a driver like Tony Stewart, who is definitely one of the best active NASCAR road course racers out there is looking for action to happen on the track.

“I can promise you, there will be a lot of guys that will just crash each other just because they think they can,” said Stewart. “I’ll bet anything I’ve got in my pocket that in the last two or

Dale Earnhardt Jr. spoke about the post race meetings on the helicopter pad where the drivers let their feeling be known to each other about the days race.

“Yeah, this place gets interesting, especially up there on the helicopter pad afterward,” said Jr. “I don’t fly to the race tracks on helicopters no more, but it’s pretty interesting after the race. Everybody just sort of gets what’s on their mind out, and they talk it out, or whatever. Or they don’t talk, and it’s just kind of awkward.”

So even after his round of apologies, what doe Jeff Gordon expect from the other drivers?

“I’m sure if they’re in a position to kind of get back for what happened, I’m sure they will,” he said. “My goal this weekend is not to allow myself to get in that position.”

This time it’s checkers or wreckers.Ã‚Â There are no points to gain, not advancement to be earned, just everyone going for the win. This years prize is the largest purse ever for an All Star Race, so there’s $1 Million reasons to get to the checkered flag first.Ã‚Â Who will be the million dollar man tonight?

Kyle Busch in the introduction line at Texas Motor Speedway - Image courtesy of JDTImages.ca

Kyle Busch had the fastest time in the most unique qualifying effort I have even seen in NASCAR.Ã‚Â After running 3 qualifying laps on the track they drivers were then required to slow the car down to pit road speed, come in to pit and make a mandatory 4 tire stop.Ã‚Â The #18 pit crew felt they had something to prove after entering the pit crew challenge as a top seed and getting knocked out in the second round.

”It’s a huge morale booster for the team. They know they’re No. 1,” Busch said of his crew. ”I know they’re No. 1.”

This is the second time that Busch has taken the pole for the All Star race but he has yet to win one. In Fact he’s failed to finish in four of his five starts with one top-10 finish.

‘”This race is a race where everybody says it suits Kyle Busch, and we all know why,” Busch said. “It’s because you can go fast, balls to the wall, and you either bring back the steering wheel or the check. Unfortunately, I’ve been highly successful at bringing back the steering wheel. Unfortunately, I have not brought back the check, so hopefully we can do that here [This weekend].”

Having wrecked out of this race in spectacular fashion a few times in the past Busch reflected on how it works when racing a teammate or his brother for the win in the All Star Race.Ã‚Â After wrecking with his brother in 2007 and again last year with his teammate Denny Hamlin where he was heard screaming over the radio, “Somebody better keep me away from Denny Hamlin after this race. I swear to God, I’m gonna kill that [expletive]. All his [expletive] fault. I had this race won! It was won!” he had this to say about that night.

“We talked about it that night and we talked about it that week after,” he said. “You think when you race a teammate or you race a brother, you kind of expect them to still be your teammate or your brother. But apparently, in the All-Star race, you’ve got no friends. So that’s it.”

Clint Bowyer (1:59.67), who will sit on theÃ‚Â outside of the front row for the 100-lap shootout watched as Busch laid down his time, knocking Bowyer off the pole near the end of the qualifying runs.

Dale Earnhardt Jr, who has been suffering from his longest career dry spell, is not on the entry list.Ã‚Â He is past his past winners allowance since more than 10 years have past since he won this race, but the fans are not about to let him down.Ã‚Â He is way out in front in the fan vote, which allows a driver to be selected to enter the field by the fans, but he wants to earn his way in regardless.Ã‚Â His plan is to win his qualifying race in the shootout.

Image Courtesy of JDTImages.ca

“I would love to get into the All-Star outright,” Earnhardt said. “I’ve paid attention for the last several months, and I know how much the fans have put into voting for me. And should we win the fan vote, it would be because of everything that they did.

“But I think they would agree with me, that they would like to see me win and go in outright, and that’s what I’m going to try to do. I know there’s tough competition in that race, but we’re going in and we’re running hard and taking all the risks.”

“The opportunity for us to win the fan vote is definitely in the back of my mind, but I don’t think it will affect me at all in how I drive the race,” Earnhardt said. “If we’re sitting there in the second segment running fifth, I promise you that’s all I can get out of it at that time.”